


Stirb Nicht Vor Mir (Don't Die Before I Do)

by Harbinger



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Angst, Angst without a happy ending, Dreams, Extremely Unhealthy Relationship, F/M, Loki is a creep in this, Lust, Major character death - Freeform, Masturbation, Mentions of Suicide, Nightmares, Nonexplicit Sexual Content, Nongraphic Depictions of Abuse/Violence in a Relationship, Takes place almost entirely in dreams, fantasies, self-induced starvation, this is not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-05-08
Packaged: 2017-12-10 18:33:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/788907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harbinger/pseuds/Harbinger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He only sees her a few times while on Earth. It's enough anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stirb Nicht Vor Mir (Don't Die Before I Do)

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Rammstein song of the same name. Written for my amazing Maria on tumblr (agent-maria-hill). No characters are mine. Heed the warnings above. I can be found at tricksteringreen for requests and questions and I don't bite. Very loosely beta'd, all mistakes are mine. I am looking for a full-time beta. Please message me on tumblr if interested.

He'd only seen her but a scant numbering of times during his brief stint on Midgard but it had been enough to sear the woman's countenance and bodice within his mental sphere. It had been enough to grab the attention of a mad god whose sanity had long been lost between the far reaches of the stars, dancing along with the swirling nebulae. It might have been very, very dangerous for the woman, but for the very simple fact that before the mad god had the chance to catch her for his own, he found himself beaten down into a crater shaped to the formation of his own chassis, bleeding, injured, and very much defeated. He glimpsed her again whilst in captivity, in that wait before he was returned to Asgard and once he and his not-brother were leaping through the portal, he saw her no more.

The council, at first, desired his head; perhaps wanting to mount it to the wall as a showing of what happened when one sought to go against the sheer might that was Asgard. How incredibly fortuitous for the mad god that his family still felt the stirrings of affection and care for him and superseded the will of the Aesir council. Execution was not an option (indeed, when one's daughter rules the very realm to which one would be going, execution is never really an option); so instead they bound his magic to the best of their limited abilities and threw him down into the furthest cells of the Asgardian dungeon. Rumors of filth that he had only ever seen the painted likeness of in books having been caged down here have long been whispered; he knew them now to be false.

Only Loki Silvertongue, only Loki Laufeyson, lived down here.

They did not chain him to the walls of his tomb (and Loki knew it was a tomb, he'd not be getting out of here before his death); what need was there, when the walls were countless feet thick and his magic was so thickly bound? A small cot and a single blanket were provided to the mad god, allowing him the idea of comfort without actually allowing him comfort itself. Where once a pampered prince had stood, now a weakened, miserable mage barely moved from where he lay on the cot. Bedsores eventually rose onto his flesh, forcing him up to move around. Always lithe and lean, Loki became sickly; always pale, he became wraithlike. Bars would not have held him and perhaps that was the reason for the six inch thick door barring him from the outside of the world and this little cell. The only soul he saw from the beginning of his time there was the single woman who came down, perhaps in pity, to bring him food, water to drink and bathe with, and new clothing now and then. Otherwise, Loki was alone.

In time long ago, Loki had once been known as the Dreamwalker. He was possessed of a rare ability to stride in silence through the slippery dreams of others, to pad the sleeping specters of people. Admittedly, he had not used this incredibly rare ability in some centuries but when his great mind began to stagnate from the lack of intellectual and mental stimulation, the god allowed himself to begin sleeping. Once asleep, he would reach out with the phantasmal tendrils of his waking consciousness and stretch them out across the cosmos until they latched - usually at random - to a dreaming soul, pulling him into the dream whereupon he could decide to passively observe or to actively enter the dream.

The first few times he attempted it, he chose to observe in silence, concealing his presence from the dreamer and watching. The dreams of the elves - his first accidental target - were incredible to witness and in this first dream, he regarded the mental conception of a splendid and grand facade of what would eventually be a stunning palace, a marvel of ingenuity that proved the elves to be some of the most brilliant beings in the Nine.

But that was not what he was after and so Loki continued to search. Precisely how long passed, he knew not; often he would dream for days and days only to be awoken by the woman gently shaking his shoulder, snapping back firmly into his own consciousness and blinking up confusedly at her. She believed him to be sleeping to conserve energy, so weak he had become and while she was partially right, Loki dreamwalked to be alive again. In the dreams of others, whether they knew he was there or not (and he never allowed this), he was strong, powerful again, body filled out as it needed to be for him to look impressive. A far cry indeed from the too-thin, too-weak chassis his rich soul currently inhabited. 

Finally, after what he knew had to be years of searching, he found her. Loki found himself watching her dream; it was an oddly domestic scene, really. She was reading a book by the fireplace, which cast a rich, stunning carmine hue against her mocha skin. He stood just beyond her line of vision, still concealed for the moment, simply watching. Her long, slender legs were curled beneath her, one arm propped on the arm of the couch with her head resting easily in the palm of her hand while the other held the book still in her lap. She did not wear the tight, regulation clothing and her hair hung free around her shoulders, longer than he would have guessed. Loki wanted to bury his hands into those tresses, see if they were as soft as he thought them to be.

She turned a page in the book she was reading and the mad god felt his heart clench; would those hands be soft against his skin, caressing and loving, or punishing and brutal? Knowing intimately the nature of dreams, he knew that the book she was reading likely did not even have words that he himself would be able to read; likely instead it would be blank pages that her unconscious mentality would spring words upon at random, a beautiful conglomeration of syllables and letters that would be nonsensical and incredible. He knew that this particular dream had to be an echo of the life the woman desired for herself; to be able to sit and read at will at any time rather than constantly waiting for the next call. His gaze tracked to her fingers again and Loki felt a surge of desire pulse through him; he wanted to kiss those fingers, worship her palms, and suck the pulse in her wrists, if only to prove to himself that she was real.

He called upon the magic that the dream state offered him and allowed himself to become visible, edging towards her line of sight. Risky though it was, Loki found himself drawn to this slip of a woman who had been utterly unafraid of firing at him despite the danger he had presented to her. She had survived his attack on Midgard and that in and of itself proved her worthy of his attentions.

In the strange warp of a dream, he found time slipping and suddenly she stood before him in her tight uniform, and a gun but two inches away from his nose, close enough he had to look down at the crosseyed to view it. Slowly, the god brought his hands up, palms out in the universal gesture of 'I mean you no harm' and watched her with a tiny quirk to his lips, hopeful. The gun did not lower.

"Loki," she said quietly, hands unwavering on the gun. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be on Asgard?"

A frown twisted the quirk out of his lips as Loki realized that she had no idea that she slept peacefully in her room while he was entombed millions if not billions of light years away. "Agent Hill, is it?" He said softly, attuning his voice to a steady croon meant to soothe. "I am on Asgard, my lady. You are sleeping."

Like the well trained dog she was, she did not lower the gun. "Sleeping. So why are you in my dream?"

"I am a Dreamwalker," he explained softly, keeping his arms up to continue to show a sign of surrender to her. "I have been looking for you, Agent Hill, for some time now."

Still the gun did not lower and Loki almost growled at her for that. "And why have you been looking for me?"

He tilted his head a bit, blinking. "You...intrigue me. You managed to avoid my attempts to kill you and yours and you are a remarkable woman among equally remarkable men, making you stand out like a beacon to them. And to me. Will you please lower your weapon?"

The gunshot sounded like a small bomb going off in the confined space and through the anamophric ripple of time and physics within a dream, Loki watched the bullet come towards him. It passed, harmless, through his forehead and fell somewhere behind him. He arched a brow at her, idly rubbing his forehead because it had tickled a bit. 

"Okay..." the woman said softly, letting the word draw out a bit as she dropped her weapon down slowly. "What do you want? I'm not going to help you get free."

Loki chuckled, low, soft, almost sad. "No, Agent Hill, there will be no getting free for me. I simply want your company. Nothing more, or less. A chance to visit you in your dreams. I cannot harm you. Not in a dream, at least. You would wake up if I slew you in a dream, you know." 

She remained quiet for a time, watching him through shrewd blue eyes that held a world of intelligence and cunning in them. "Fine. But the first time you try anything stupid, I'm going to ring up Asgard as soon as I wake up and demand they shoot you or do whatever would be necessary to kill you up there."

He laughed again, nodding. "You do that."

He remained with her another fifteen or twenty minutes of dream time before the murmur of his name repeated over and over called him back to the world of the waking. Maria wondered the next day where he'd gone so suddenly. The woman in the cell smiled warmly at him, fed him, and let him bathe and switch clothing. She also put a salve on the bedsores that had collected on his back, shoulders, and hips from laying constantly on the bed. Beyond that, she did little and left him again.

Days passed before he managed to pull himself into her dream again, finding himself in the midst of a battle that he did not recognize. Though visible, the woman was so enraptured by the fight that she did not notice him, for which he was grateful; it would only lead later to angry questions as to why he did not help her. He could not, after all, it did not rest within his powers to pull one out of a dream. All he could do was observe her nightmare impassively, wondering if this was a new battle or an older one. It ended abruptly and Loki found himself gasping awake, realizing that she had thrown herself out of the dream violently. 

The next time he appeared in her dreams, she was sitting at the counter of a bar, drinking. Loki sat down next to her, offering nothing more than silent companionship because that was all he could give. She said nothing and nor did he. Instead, he looked at her. He looked at the way her hands cupped the tumbler of whiskey she held. Loki looked at the way her lips parted to take in the amber liquor; he looked at the sleek line of her throat when she swallowed. He looked at the dull blue wash of her eyes, at the circles and bags beneath them, painful evidence of poor sleep. He looked at the slant of her nose, of the shape of her lips, at the arch of her cheekbone; he looked at the sway of her forehead, at the dance of her hair when she moved. And Loki wanted. After some time, she rose, gave him a neutral nod, and walked away. He found himself blinking up at the abysmal ceiling of his tomb a second later.

At times he walked other dreams. Sometimes he visited the other Avengers, other times he'd delve into the dreams of old friends to say hello. But he always returned to Maria, drawn to the bright light within her that had first attracted his often-dangerous attention. They rarely spoke in the dreams but after a half dozen times of regular visiting, she finally allowed him to reach out to caress her cheek. Her flesh was so soft it made his heart ache, made desire pool thick and heavy and low in his body but he made no move to act on it. And if the woman who tended to him day in and day out noticed the faint smell of semen and the wet cloth that he cleaned himself with, she never mentioned it. Pleasure was something Loki felt so rarely now that each release was painful to him and left him gasping at air for long minutes later.

Each dream brought them closer to one another, much to the god's relief. He could touch her more freely; a stroke on the arm, a ghost of fingers trailing over her leg, a hand on her smaller back. She responded to such gestures with small smiles or by leaning into them; encouraging him to do more. The first brush of their lips sent his heart racing so much that it actually pulled him from the dream and made him sit up to clutch at his chest, gasping painfully. Loki counted one of his greatest triumphs as being able to bury a hand into her hair and find it as soft as he had thought it would be. The pair spent the next three dreams doing nothing but kissing, with a hand sunk into the hair of the other, her perched on his lap.

The crowning achievement in his life was finally getting to worship that beautiful body the way that it was meant to be worshiped. Loki took his time with her, kissing as much skin as he could, leaving love marks and bites along her collarbones, around her hips, on her thighs. He drunk her down, high on her scent and taste, savouring her in a way he'd not savoured someone since Sigyn. She cried his name out with each release, granted as many times as he could before taking her, completing her with his body and groaning into her throat when she let him find his own climax. Loki knew that it was as close to Valhalla as he would ever be allowed to see, laying here drenched in sweat with her arms around him, each of them smelling of sex and of each other.

Four dreams after they'd finally coupled, Loki lay with her head resting on his chest and she frowned at him. "You're dying," she whispered, listening to his slowing heart.

"Yes," Loki agreed, without looking at her.

Maria sat up slowly, looking down at him with a frown. She reached out and caught his hand gently in hers and brought it up to her throat. Loki sat up as well, confused.

"Kill me," she breathed, "like you're killing yourself."

So he squeezed her throat until she vanished; a death in a dream meant you woke up. With the dream broken, Loki found himself blinking awake and for the first time in a long time, rolled onto his side and openly wept into a pillow, until there were no more tears to cry. When the woman came to tend to him, he turned her away violently, telling her to take her false pity elsewhere. His time was growing short now and Loki wanted nothing to stand in the way of him and the afterlife. Loki knew well that it would be a simple matter of asking Hel to release his soul back to him once he was alive again, but why? To suffer a terrible like where he was shunned for being the Harbinger? Loki would rather sleep in the peace of death until the cycle renewed itself and he could live again, perhaps not as Loki this time.

Loki did not return to her for several days and when he did , she met him with tears and kisses and the hardest fuck of his life. She yelled at him even as she rode him, holding his wrists above his head on the wall for leverage, screaming at him for leaving her to worry if he had died. She accepted no apologies, would listen to nothing he said and took her rage out on him in the form of bruises and bloody bites. When finished, he begged her for forgiveness and received on a harsh slap and a command for him to leave for his try.

When Loki slipped back into her dream the next night, he found instead a nightmare. He looked on as she fought him, at full strength and power, under his own thoughts - more so than he had been before, at least. He could do nothing but watch and so Loki did, impressed by her fighting style but knowing she stood no chance against him. And when his magic ripped her apart, the dream dissolved and he opened his eyes to darkness again. Loki searched for her again that night, but found nothing.

Loki knew he was weakening. It became harder and harder to tap into the part of himself that allowed him to dreamwalk. He slept deeper each day, body beginning to feast on itself as he refused meal and meal. Even under the threat of beatings, he refused to eat; when they did hit him, he barely felt it. Loki was dying; there was no getting around that and he had already made his peace with the world. 

He made his way into her dreams for what felt like the last time about three nights after the nightmare. Loki crawled onto the couch and settled his head onto Maria's stomach, weak and exhausted. She stroked a hand through his hair, soothing the roiling of his mind and the punishing waves of sorrow and fear he felt.

"I love you," he breathed against the fabric of her shirt, nuzzling her stomach. "Tell me you love me, Maria. Tell me even if it is a lie." 

"I love you, too, Loki," she replied softly, utterly truthful. 

Dying in a dream meant waking up in the real world but not for Loki. His body was too weak, his mind unwilling to fight anymore. At least in the dream he was not in pain.

"Loki, please," she breathed softly, stroking his hair. "Please, you can't do this. You're a god, gods aren't supposed to die."

His laughter hitched painfully, spurring a coughing session that spilled blood out of his mouth. "We're not supposed to bleed, either," he whispered, wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand. "All things die, my love. Even gods."

"You're not supposed to die before me," she whispered, stroking his hair again. "I'm the human, remember? You're not supposed to die!"

Loki nuzzled her stomach softly, slowly becoming less and less substantial. "No, Maria. It's time. I'll find you again, in the next life. I promise. Let me go now." He kissed her stomach, letting her drag him up to kiss her again.

"Find me," she whispered over and over between kisses, cradling his face as he continued to fade from her. "Find me, Loki, find me."

The god's lips twisted up into one last smile against her own and far away in the distant realm of Asgard, his heart stopped. The second it ceased to beat, the second his brain activity stopped, Loki vanished, leaving Maria cradling nothing and sobbing openly until the force of it shook her awake.


End file.
